Dr. Clifford A. Kiracofe

Thursday July 4, 2013

The July 3 move by the Egyptian military to stabilize the country signals the collapse of Obama’s Middle East policy.

Washington’s present interventionist regional policy began during the George W. Bush administration and was fatally flawed from the start. The Obama administration simply compounded the mistakes while moving it forward.

Vice President Dick Cheney and his neo-con team created a crusade against the Shia branch of Islam targeting Iran, its ally Syria, and Hizbullah in Lebanon. The strategy called for a coalition of Sunni Saudi Arabia and the Sunni Gulf states plus Israel plus Turkey.

Sounds familiar doesn’t it? Neoconservative fellow-traveler Republicans, like Senator John McCain, have blown trumpets for the policy for years. The Obama White House adopted it as its own. The basic idea is to crush if not Balkanize Syria, go after Hizbullah, and then go to war against Iran.read on...

Monday July 1, 2013

The case of Edward J. Snowden raises a number of difficult issues for the United States. The case impacts on Washington’s foreign policy and on US domestic politics. The decline of American representative democracy is now sharply in focus.

Americans naturally want appropriate and necessary capabilities to defend our country but we do not want such capabilities turned on ourselves in violation of the US Constitution.

The impact on domestic US politics is squarely on issues of constitutional law. Already the watchdog American Civil Liberties Union filed a court case against the government as a result of Snowden’s revelations.read on...